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THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION: GENERAL SUBJECTS.
The admissibility and the right treatment of exceptional incidents as subjects for art are questions of considerable importance. We hold that these are admissible sparingly, but indubitably, when dwelt upon, not for the futile reason that they are singular, but as developing in an extraor- dinary degree qualities, effects, or emotions, valuable in themselves; and that, once selected, they must be treated with uncompromising respect to truth, which will be, in such cases, exceptional truth, or, if there be no help for it, with a bold and confessed conventionality in certain points of fact which cannot be fully managed in combination with the essential purpose. Mr. Millais's exceptional picture of " The Rescue," where three children, saved from a burning house, are restored to their mother, fulfils both these conditions. Intense and noble human emotion in a moment of overwhelming dramatic interest, which comes home to all of us with the most perfect directness and force, is its essence ; and this is represented under an effect which every resource of art has been used to render to the utmost thoroughgoing and fierce, as far as is compatible with the supremacy of that emotion. The entire history and action of the picture are concentrated into the briefest compass. Of actual fire there is none save a burning brand upon the staircase ; but the full vim- lance and horror of it are embodied in the glare upon the figures, and the means used for its counteraction in the hose which lies along the stairs. The mother kneels half-way up the flight, her golden hair hardly gathered up, and with nothing on her but her night-gown. Why she is at that precise spot we do not know exactly, any more than we might in nature. Perhaps she has been hurrying about frantically, running up and down the stairs after her children, till beaten back by the scorching flames and stifling smoke ; perhaps she has fallen on her knees to pray ; or dropped down at this very moment to receive the priceless treasure in her arms. However this may be, the anguish is now all gone ; there is nothing in her face but an ecstatic joy that floods every pulse of her being—flushes her cheeks rose-crimson, parts her panting lips, and lights up her azure eyes like cressets. The fireman is descending the stairs with determined unprecipitate caution- s solid dauntless Englishman, whose daily bread is the contempt of death —his mouth sensitive, but compressed and unbending, his eyes counting every treacherous step before him. His business at the instant is to de- liver up the children; and doubtless there is other business for him in the flames which must be attended to with wordless promptitude. The best criticism we have heard on his passionless self-possession was ex- pressed in the phrase "There is the whole battle of Inkerman in that face." Round his neck clings the eldest boy ; who looks back into the fire with curiosity excited but untenified. Under his right arm is a little girl, the hem of her night-shift burned away, and her poor legs singed, and the long yellow hair falling so as wholly to conceal her face; but we need not see it for we know its expression, as, pressing her hand hard against the man, she strains to leap out of his grasp into her mother's. His left hand holds an infant, which sobs in utter piteous distress, but has now recognized its beloved refuge, as it clasps its mother round the neck. To our perception, no possible heightening could be given to the pathos of the scene as expressed in this half visible face, that of the mother, and the girl's action; while the fireman and the boy are equally right ior true character, and as affording the counterbalance of com- parative repose to emotions so wild and hurried. As for the effect, it blazes with an inner light which almost seems its own, and not matter of the laying on of pigment. That it is absolutely true—that there would not be something more of capricious play and variation in nature —we are far from supposing or asserting, as far as we are from believing that so resolute an approximation to the truth is extant anywhere else. Of the main correctness of the deep crimson tone of the fire reflection, rather than any yellower or paler shade, we entertain no doubt from reminiscences of actual fire effects witnessed by night. Dawn, grey and primrose-hued, is here stealing on, as may be seen by the glimpse of roofs and sky out of window, and by the tone which falls over the mother, whom some turn in the wall must be understood to have taken out of the fire-light and thrown into cool shadow ; but this would not, we appre- hend, make any material difference in the blood-red effect within-doors. Probably there would be more smoke than the artist has represented—but the suppression of that (if really to be expected) is a bold conventionality, such as we started by calling necessary in order not to interfere with the expression of the picture : possibly also the window-panes would have cracked in the furious heat, and the reason for the cessation of the fire- light on the mother and infant would be more clearly explained by a sharper boundary-line of shadow. The fireman looks stunted ; and some parts of the picture—parts strictly subordinate—are manifestly hurried. Here ceases what we find to say in demur. We have before called the work its author's master-piece, and the finest in the exhibition—belong- ing, in fact, to a totally different genus from everything else ; and we have nothing to express but profound admiration of the sentiment and wonder at the execution.
It would be difficult to find a picture more abhorrent to flesh and blood than Mr. Egg's " Life and Death of Buckingham," or one treated with a more outspoken disregard of everything save the truth to be rendered, or with more remarkable artistic cleverness of style. The ghastly dead wretch in the second compartment of the painting is feally almost a relief rather than otherwise from the leering hardened women of the first, and the blase men to whom the orgie has lost every excitement but that of its wickedness. The worst of it is, that this brutalism and this horror are thrust in our faces without, as far as we can perceive, any such valuable moral lesson as was unquestionably intended. The Duke of Buckingham, though he happened by mere accident to die in a miserable room, did not die a miserable man ; his death was not dependent upon his de- bauchery ; and, as for the bare fact that he first rioted and then died, what of it ? No maddest libertine is such a fool as not to know that he must die. The moral of the picture, therefore, we must pronounce naught ; the revulsion of feeling with which each section of it de- serves to be regarded, considerable ; the impressiveness of rendering in each, so far as its mere thoroughness is concerned, very great. In the first compartment the effect of the window open on the midnight sky, with the moon looking in on the heated revel, and the figure of the sardonic-featured Charles II, are among the best points. Buck- ingham's expression is not very clear, unless it be drunken dignity ; the lights and shades are cut up, though probably not untruthfully according to the aspect represented ; and the general tone is somewhat chalky. The young man and woman to the right are the only figures whose mien indi- cates something better than the general abandonment. In the second, the corpse's wig off, the sponge which has perhaps been used, or perhaps left untouched, to wipe his clammy lips, the order of the Garter hanging loose from his knee, the fallen mouth and clutch at the pillow, and the crushed butterfly on the floor, all combine to aggravate the hideousness of that mean untended deathbed. Generally and in detail, this scene is full of excellent painting : what Buckingham has done with his right leg is not sufficiently evident. On the whole, this double picture constitutes much the moat memorable thing that Mr. Egg has produced. His other subject, Robert Emmet in prison consoled by the lady of his love, is powerfully handled, and has a look of acute feeling ; but the impression it produces on us is that of the look without the substance. "Through the green shade wandering" is a small figure of a lady of the Stuart times, with a pert archness in her face which there seems to be nothing to call forth. The " Sancho Panza and Dr. Pedro Rezio " of Mr. Leslie, though on a small scale of development, is as exquisite a piece of quiet humour as he has produced at his best. The state bearer of the governor's knife and fork standing motionless for the word of command, the eye (for one sees no more) of the page bringing in a dish to the right, and the watery un- conquerable smile which relaxes the features of the attendant facing the
ruthless doctor, and which the living spectator is constrained to respond to with one of his own, are all perfect. Sancho, bewildered an fidgety, but on his best behaviour, is also capital. The execution is the extreme of simplicity, yet hardly insufficient. Mr. Maclise's great excellences and grave defects have been canvassed to tiresomeness :
without, therefore, repeating what every year gives us occasion to observe, we shall say simply, that " Orlando about to engage with Charles the Duke's Wrestler," is on the whole a better than average Mediae. Or-
lando, who glances up at Rosalind with the worship of incipient first love, as he steps forward in self-possessed courage to engage his bull-dog antagonist, is a figure of remarkable completeness and manly grace. Ro- salind also, though her face is the usual stereotyped one, has more of genuine womanly softness and subdued impulse than usual. Charles is extreme, but vigorous. Luckily, these are the principal figures, for the rest have less to recommend them. The painter's theatrical tendency may be estimated by noting that no fewer than seven of the chief actors, not to speak of background supernumeraries, are scowling under their brows, or looking out of the corners of their eyes,—Oliver and his man, Charles the Duke Rosalind, Touchstone, and Orlando. The bran-new Elizabethan mansion at the back is an eyesore and a solecism: indeed, we have heard that it has been copied, at the request of the purchaser of the picture, from his own fresh-stuccoed country hall, conservatories and all.
There are few faultier pictures on the walls, in a technical sense, than
Mr. Poole's "Seventh Day of the Decameron—Philomena's song by the side of the Beautiful Lake in the Ladies' Valley" ; yet scarcely one that is so visibly the work of a poet, or that appeals so surely to the subtiler sense of the beholder. Drawing, colour, effect, truth, perspective, arrangement, have gone to the four winds: to say that the picture re- mains nevertheless tolerable, and even beautiful, is to say that Mr. Poole is the one in a thousand—a man of genius. And such he is proclaimed to be by the tender delicate faces and actions, the warm atmosphere of love and enjoyment free from any slightest taint of sensual coarseness, and the pang of undefined melancholy—true evidence of the poetic in- sight— which seems, as it were, to give all this enjoyment its richest zest, even while it cankers the heart of it. Mr. Poole ill-treats his glorious gifts, but be cannot conceal them. The conditions of the case are reversed with Sir Charles Eastlake ; yet he too is as bad as usual, and as good as usual,—that is to say, that "Beatrice," (Shakspere's Beatrice, we assume,) who has heretofore been Irene, and Heloise, and any number of other women, is supremely unnatural and unmeaning, and yet bears evidence in no stinted degree to its author's artistic susceptibility and knowledge. Uniting calm judgment to feeling and skill, Mr. Dyce is a step in advance of either Mr. Poole or the Pre- sident; but, in his work also—a head of Coleridge's " Christabel" pray- ing at the old oak-tree, the feeling is the really worthy thing, and that is very delightfully touched with the early piety and charm,—although one cannot but perceive that it trenches on mannerism. The white roses in the hair look extremely like artificial flowers; and as to the adjuration quoted from the poet,
" Her face—oh ! call it fair, not pale,"
we would venture to hint at " dingy " as more exactly descriptive than either epithet ; and this still more markedly of the hands. Mr. Herbert's picture of "Lear recovering his reason at the sight of Cordelia " has all the parade of severity and of sentiment too deep to be vivid or violent, but none of the essence of these. It will impose on that most gullible of all classes which believes in the "dodge" of quietism and the shallow profound ; but on investigation, you find that the painter's affectation of childish simplicity is no affectation at all—that he is as empty at the fiftieth glance as for after reaction's sake he calculated on your believing at the first. This gentleman's son, Mr. A. I. Herbert junior, exhibits "Don Quixote's first impulse to lead the life of a Knight-errant" ; pro- mising enough in certain qualities of painting, but in character a crass misconception. The chivalrous gentleman is made a tailor taking a re- ligious turn, or a cobbler whose snub nose turns up at the universe mo- rally as well as physically.
Britomart Unarming," by Mr. F. R. Pickersgill, is lower in tone
than his wont with such subjects; in colour, refined and pleasant, but in other respects weak,—unless, indeed, we except Britomart herself, who is something of what one may imagine the fighting beauty. "Christian conducted by Charity, Prudence, Piety, and Discretion, into the Valley of Humiliation," is a step lower. "An Armenian Lady, Cairo—the Love Missive " constitutes a feature of the gallery, as coming from the distinguished water-colourist Mr. Lewis. With many of his known ex- cellences, the management of the oil-colour betrays a certain stickiness. Mr. Frith has nothing much worth looking at, whether in regard to sub- ject, scale, or treatment : " Feeding the Calves," where Mr. Ansdell has worked together with him, and with a good result of uniformity, is the best—natural and naive. From Mr. Frost's "Bacchante and Young Faun Dancing " we turn with reprobation and disgust. Mr. Goodall, whose subjects are generally scarce deserving the name at all, has one of a higher cast this year—" The Arrest of a Peasant Royalist, Brittany, 1793" ; without making it one of his worst pictures, he turns it into a scene from a " drame." Leslie devoid of humour and hard in painting would be Mr. Horsley as he appears in the authorship of the "Scene from /Jon Quixote," where the curate, barber, niece, and housekeeper, massacre the library of romance.
Let us turn from these habitues to names some of which at least are unhacknied. A life-sized head named " Figiva," by Miss S. M. Boyce, contains, we have small hesitation in asserting, the very best painted flesh in the whole gallery—broad, pure, and simple, with only the faintest dash of crudity. The face unites beauty and character, with a more de- cided bias towards the latter on the artist's part. Nor is the arrangement of colour less eloquent of a genuine gift—the violet-tinted hood and greenish blue of the sky, dappled with spurts of cloud, bringing out the ruddy hair and crimson lips admirably. The " Study " of a lady with a black lace veil seems to be of an equal range of excellence. Without sinning on the side of the masculine, Miss Boyce paints with a manliness which there are few men to emulate. Another lady, Miss Howitt, sends a subject whose painfulness is in nowise glossed over, and in which the expression is carried to a point of anguish " that would not be comfort- ed." " The Castaway" presents a girl, once beautiful, now haggard and faded, seated by a dust-heap, and leaning her fevered head against a wall. She has set down a basket of flowers, and her lilies lie tainted along the grimy ground. The point of the picture is the expression, which has something arresting in its unsoftened intensity : the execution is a minor
matter, but that also, though chargeable with some woolliness, is tho- roughly conscientious both in detail and in effect, and the idea of the subject pervades every part of it. " Rivalry," by Mr. W. Cave Thomas, is replete with most highly-wrought and excellent painting—not to speak of drawing, which few English artists indeed can dispute against this gentleman. The subject has nothing of that abstruse turn which has interfered with popular appreciation of Mr. Thomas on former occasions, but there is still a coldness in the embodiment. The concealment of the principal lady's face, whether it please us or not, shows that he is above conforming to rule when he conceives that a departure from it will suit his purpose better. Mr. W. J. Grant, long the drudge of academic pedantries, and still far from fully emancipated from them, shows a capacity for better things both in " The Red Rose," and, much more noticeably, in " Dr. John- son carries home the poor girl be found deserted in the streets,"— which is painted with a telling simplicity, and has some genuine tender- ness, that makes it not unworthy of true-hearted " great old Samuel" and the pathetic theme. Mr. Glass's " Evening on the Prairie—a Doubtful Sign," has a fresh subject, a luminous sky, and doubtless many of the merits of its talented painter ; but it is hung too high to be judged in de- tail. The same doom weighs upon Mr. Martineau's " Taming of the Shrew,"—in which, however, we can discern straightforward probable action, thorough handling, and strong, clear, unfaltering colour. On " Griselda expelled from the House of the Marquis " Mr. Gale has be- stowed all possible care, and that of a kind possessing valuable qualities in itself : he has done his best to discriminate character and vary incident; but, in spite of all, the result is a perfect caput mortuum. Not to speak of the faces—look at the actions of the hands, how totally lifeless, trailing, and languid! The best point of incident, and that not difficult to think of, is the youth spreading his cloak for the patient wife's naked feet. Mr. Gale can paint and imitate, but not compose ; and this prescribes single heads or figures as the one line of art in which he would be able to achieve a solid position. Pallid and undistinctive is Mr. Woodington's "Vessel under conduct of an Angel coming over the waves with Spirits to Purga- tory," from Dante, or, as Browning says, " colourless and faint-designed." The spirits move accurately, but not impulsively ; and the meaning of the whole thing is "Royal Academy Life-School and Practice in Sculpture," far rather than Dante, poetry, or spirit-world. Mr. Wyburd has a pretty " Lalla Rookh," which, though not more solid in stuff than previous ex- amples, is probably the completest of all in its own line; and Mr. Hopley, in"A Primrose from England" which raised antipodal Australians to a pitch of enthusiasm by its memories of home, has got hold of one of the most poetic subjects in the gallery, and turned out one of the most feel- ingless and incapable pictures.
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